Deadly ‘racist’ attack in France: Are hate crimes rising in Europe?

A gunman in northern France has killed one person and injured five, including a 12-year-old girl who was seriously wounded, in what authorities are calling a racially motivated “terrorist” attack.

The shooting on Friday was carried out as mounting and often violent cost-of-living protests grip the country with more demonstrations expected on Saturday.

President Emmanuel Macron called the shooting “a terrorist and racist attack”.

So what was behind this attack? And has there been a rise in Islamophobia in Europe?

Here’s what we know:

What has happened in France?

About 10:30am (08:30 GMT) on Friday, a gunman drove through the towns of Trappes and La Verriere, a working class area on the outskirts of Paris with a large immigrant and Muslim population, and fired an automatic weapon randomly at a petrol station, a medical centre and a children’s playground.

The rampage lasted about 15 minutes before the suspect, identified as 39-year-old Kevin T, was arrested. Laurent Mazaury, the local MP, said the suspect told police he wanted to “kill foreigners”. He added: “I think we are facing a racist person.”

French media reported a young Black man was killed and a woman wearing a headscarf and a 12-year-old girl wearing a headscarf were among those shot and injured.

The man who was killed was identified as Pengo Bassio Wangi.

The girl, of North African descent, was shot eight times, according to her mother, and was transferred to a children’s hospital for surgery.

In a statement, prosecutors said of the five people injured, three were in critical condition.

How have the French authorities responded?

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told reporters on Friday that investigations are “ongoing but it is clearly a terrorist crime”.

Prosecutors said they were investigating whether the suspect had conspired with a “terrorist group” and added that a member of the gunman’s immediate “family circle” had also been taken into custody.

A local police chief told French media that the authorities had found an “older-style semiautomatic weapon” used in World War II in the suspect’s car as well as tear gas grenades.

The mayor of Trappes, Ali Rabeh, said the suspect was “firing at random” and wanted to cause a “bloodbath” in the communities, calling it “objectively a racist attack, probably Islamophobic”.

Writing on X, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said the case was “very serious” and “all resources of the security forces and the judiciary are fully mobilised”.

The shooting comes at a moment of great tension in France as violent cost-of-living and student protests grip the country.

French authorities are to deploy 70,000 police officers on Saturday as protests, which some far-right voices have blamed on Muslim youths, are expected to continue.

What have the reactions to the shooting been?

Macron released a statement on Friday calling the “racist terrorist attack” a “turning point in the life of our Republic and our nation”.

“Tonight, I have reiterated the Nation’s support for all the victims and their families,” he said on X. “I have also reaffirmed our absolute determination to continue the fight against racism, in all its forms.”

Mayor Rabeh, who has Moroccan roots, said the people targeted “could just as easily have been my mother, my brothers or my sisters-in-law”.

“A 12-year-old girl is between life and death after being targeted by a volley of automatic gunfire in our country,” he said. “Her crime was probably being of colour.”

The girl’s mother told French broadcaster RTL: “How could anyone do this to a child?”

She questioned whether her daughter had been targeted because she was wearing a headscarf.

“She’s a child who was born in France, in Trappes,” she said. “She has the right to live in France, to make her life in France.”

The leader of the far-right anti-immigration National Rally party, Marine Le Pen, condemned the attack, calling it “barbaric”.

However, Muslim groups accused the populist right of creating a climate of hatred in the country with Islamophobic rhetoric. Most recently, Le Pen, who is campaigning for the French presidency, has proposed that women who wear the headscarf in public spaces should be fined.

Some members of the far right have also sought to blame Muslim young people for the violence taking place during ongoing protests, Farid Hafez, a senior researcher at Georgetown University’s The Bridge Initiative, which monitors incidents of Islamophobia in Europe, wrote in an article for Al Jazeera.

Last week, the European Parliament passed a resolution “on the need for an EU strategy to counter Islamist entryism and the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood network”. It was tabled by the centre-right European People’s Party and passed in a 381-167 vote with 15 abstentions.

“Symbolically, the resolution is a major victory for Europe’s right-wing anti-Muslim forces,” Hafez wrote. “It shows that the European Parliament has started abandoning any firewall against the far right as the centre right draws closer and closer to the far right.”

Rabeh said Friday’s shooting was a result of people “blaming all the ills of this society on Arab Muslims. All these comments cause deaths,” an apparent reference to the rhetoric of far-right political groups such as the National Rally. He denounced lawmakers who have made negative comments about Muslims as “criminals” who “ideologically weaponise those who are capable of committing crimes”.

The French Muslim Council blamed “the promoters of anti-Muslim hate speech who have blood on their hands”.

Are Islamophobic attacks on the rise in Europe, US?

Advocacy groups and monitors said they are.

In June, Amnesty International reported that Islamophobic violence in the United Kingdom has reached “emergency levels” with an escalating wave of hate crimes and targeted attacks, including rapes and firebombing of mosques.

The European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency says racism against Muslims has risen in recent years and reported that one in two Muslims in Europe experience racial discrimination, especially when it comes to applying for jobs and housing.

In the UK, the monitoring group Tell MAMA reported 1,909 anti-Muslim cases last year, a 5 percent rise on the previous year, but said the true figure is likely to be much higher because many people don’t come forward.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations released a report on Friday condemning the attacks in France. It also revealed that reports of anti-Muslim bias are at an all-time high in the United States with California’s attorney general reporting a 54 percent rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2025, from 24 to 38.